Saturday August 15th 3 car bashing.

 I finally got a chance to retest my Alcyon II. Is it as good as modern cars ? Short answer, no. There were instances when It was very competitive againstmy friends X4 '26 and a Cero Zero. They were surprised by it, especially when track temps were at it's peak. I was cornering real tight and able to out corner my friends cars, not consistently though. I still am not braking consistently enough sometimes over shooting the apexes. But as the day wore on and temps dropped about 5C, I suddenly felt the car was no longer competitive, it was not able to hold corner speed anymore and the rear end started losing some grip causing lost time. So this is the complaints most TC drivers have about  changing track conditions affecting performance.As the day wore on, their cars improved while mine deteriorated. The difference is apparent when I could no longer catch up. 

So I have a plan. Yes my car is very old, but there were a few things I have not tried yet.

1. I bought a TRF420 spool with steel outdrives. I am curious how a spool will feel like vs the 500k front gear diff. The spool is a little lighter and It should also pull the car ahead on initial acceleration, I feel with the gear diff I am losing about half a second to 1 second of outright corner rip. That is basically the biggest thing I don't have on my car vs theirs. 

2. I also planning on leaning in the shocks a bit. All modern cars have the shocks leaning in a lot. 

3. The way I brake isn't good. I brake while turning, and this causes the car to suddenly straighten out while turning, which loses corner speed. I need to brake only when car is straight.

4. I now plan to use same shock oil on front and rear instead of harder oil in front.  It should balance out well with the spool.

5. The rear gear diff felt too light. When I opened up the rear diff it was apparent why. The oil has turned black and there want much of it left. Two things were happening, the oil was leaning out from the side seals, and the remaining oil was breaking down and overheating causing it to turn black. I bought some special harder tamiya Blue O rings and they will come together with the spool. I will also up the rear diff oil from 3000 to 5000. 

It is a rather exciting time, learning more and more about setup , so many combinations to try. Lets see if I can improve the Alcyon II even further.